A common criticism that has been leveled against Russell T's
resurrection of Doctor Who is that the stories never stray too far
from Earth and that there is little traveling to alien planets. The scale
of the series is too small they say.

Russell T has previously stated that he wanted to avoid stories set on
Planet Zog, meaning that he wanted people to be able to relate to human
situations. With this episode, like The Idiot's
Lantern, the scale of the story is set at a single street and more
specifically a single household.

This story shares certain plot elements from that earlier episode.
The sinister goings-on are limited to the one street and are set against
the backdrop of a national celebration. An unhappy family is the focus of
the story. This episode continues the motif of unhappy families which has
been appearing in some of the episodes of this season: Love and Monsters showed us a melancholy Jackie;
Rose not quite being reunited with her "father" in Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel; The Idiot's Lantern with its monstrous father. In
this episode the "father" is literally the monster of the episode.

This was a good solid story, with a great portrayal of the Doctor from
Tennant. The Tenth Doctor's character trait of irreverent exuberance
turning on a dime to seriousness was nicely illustrated here by the actor.
The idea of drawings coming to life and vice versa was well done on screen
and the scribble was a bit of fun. The nod to the Shining was amusing
too.

The "small scale" of the episodes such as this, which deal with human
emotions, far from making the show smaller actually broaden the horizons
of the programme, as the universal themes reach out to anyone alive.

While the episode was entertaining, the really interesting elements
were the ones that fitted into the New Series as a whole. In Season One a
regular motif was the plight of a lonely alien which mirrored the Doctor's
situation of being the last of his kind. This motif appears in this
episode again, but in a way which examines his relationship with Rose at
this stage in the New Series. The Doctor is still lonely, and Rose wants
to help but will he let her?

This episode had various symmetries to the New Series opening episode
Rose. The mention of "The Shadow Proclamation".
Then, Rose unsure as whether to travel with the Doctor; now, Rose is sure
that she wants to travel with the Doctor forever. Most subtle is the
image of the Doctor holding out his hand for Rose at the beginning of the
episode Rose, which is reversed here: when the Doctor
mentions about the loneliness of the alien and the need for a hand to
hold, Rose jokingly grabs his hand. Jokingly, but not joking.

Although there was an oblique reference in The
Empty Child/The Doctor Dances to the Doctor's family (he says he knows
how someone feels when they say they used to be a father and grandfather),
this episode has a real surprise. The discussion of families in this
episode prompts the Doctor to boldly and directly state he "used to be a
father".

This jolts Rose out of her assumptions about the Doctor just as much as
the revelation in School Reunion that there
have been other companions before her.

At the end of the episode we have an echo of how we began the Season in
the optimistic sunshine of New Earth, with Rose
talking about traveling with the Doctor forever. The Doctor sidesteps the
conversation again: he feels there is a storm coming. Foreshadowing has
been steadily increasing over the last half of the season; the Beast's
ominous prophecy; Elton ruminating on what happens to people who are too
close to the Doctor.

Where is this all leading? The episode titles of the next two-parter
add to the gloom.

(While knowing nothing of what those episodes contain, the titles
remind me of Shakespeare's Macbeth and conjure up in my mind a image of
the Doctor being confronted by apparitions in the manner of Banquo's
ghost, but a whole army ghosts. The Time Lords. Katarina. Sara Kingdom.
Adric. Instead of proclaiming "Do not shake thy gory locks at me!", I
imagine him saying "Sorry. I'm so sorry." This is just a guess!)

I thought for the first five minutes of this episode that it might be
hurt by following up another down-to-Earth episode with Love and Monsters but those fears were soon
dissolved when I was dragged into this powerful, quite brilliant in its
own way, story. And whilst there are influences here, notably the
Excorcist, the Shining and even Doctor Who's own Deadstone Memorial, it manages to subvert all of
these and become a genuinely smashing episode in its own right. It is so
bizarre, I seem to be enjoying all of the not so popular episodes this
year (I adored Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of
Steel and Love and Monsters) and having
difficulty with what the majority thinks are classics (The Idiot's Lantern was trad Who but far too
dull and The Satan Pit was a major disappointment
after a stunning first episode in The
Impossible Planet). Fear Her is (judging by the Outpost
Gallifrey poll) another episode which has divided viewers but personally
I thought it was very necessary, it brought the focus back on the Doctor
and Rose (especially Rose), it provided some real scares after last week's
lighter episode, it hinted at greater drama to come in the coming weeks
and, most importantly, it managed to be a deeply serious episode, almost
an adult drama without losing its audience to stifling boredom. For what
is the sleeper episode of the year, the one which bides time whilst we
wait for the finale, that is no mean feat.

I probably won't be popular for saying this but I thought this was
Billie's best performance to date. I expect all the Father's Day fans will crawl out of the woodwork
and bludgeon me to death now but everything she did in this episode felt
effortless, and after all of the smugness and jealousy Rose has radiated
earlier in the season it is just wonderful to see her back to being
supportive, resourceful and hugely entertaining to watch. Come The Idiot's Lantern I was ready to admit I thought
she worked better against Eccleston's Doctor but The Impossible Planet and Fear Her
have turned all that around. Piper and Tennant exhibit a natural
chemistry now which doesn't feel forced by the scripts (unlike say the
beginning of New Earth) and their detective work
at the start of this story is fabulous to watch. Rose gets to be
intelligent without stealing the Doctor's limelight and exhibits a
personality of fun without forgetting that it is a very serious situation
they are trying to solve. I loved the sense of curiosity she had,
especially after she opened the garage and was attacked by the scribble...
she never learns and like the rest of us cannot resist pulling open
Chloe's cupboard when it emanates strange noises!

Piper's performance when trying to egg the truth out of Trish whilst
trying to stay sympathetic is very sensitive and her anger towards Chloe
when the Doctor is stolen from her is palpable. I love that they gave Rose
a chance to shine on her own before she bows out in the finale; her
struggle to find the spaceship, to get it home and then save Trish and
Chloe from the monster in the closet sees Rose at her all time best. If
you ever wanted to know why Billie Piper won best actress in the BAFTAs
last year watch Fear Her again and soak in her naunced performance.

But let's not forget David Tennant's contribution, which is (as ever)
vital to make the episode work. Not to repeat myself but just three
episodes ago I was ready to declare Eccleston's Doctor my favourite of the
two, simply because Tennant did not seem to take the role as seriously and
goes a bit crazy too often for my liking. I genuinely think Tennant has
found his niche now; of all the episodes to convince me that he really is
the Doctor I have always loved, Fear Her was the one.

It's that mix of eccentric and serious that Tom Baker mastered so
beautifully that Tennant has exacted now: unpredictable as hell, crazy
about life, desperately trying to help others and uncomfortably close to
his best friend. Tennant is such an attractive man and his zest and energy
just adds to that attraction. He is supplied with line after line of
acidic wit in this episode that just adds further charm. He is reminiscent
(talking absently to himself), manipulative (using his words very
carefully to work his way into Trish's house), deeply caring (stroking
Chloe's hair as she talks of her possession) and yet surprisingly awkward
when trying to appeal to Chloe in a childlike way. My mother pointed out
that it is fascinating to watch Tennant in the role because every week he
reveals something new about his character, a fresh emotion is peeled away
which makes the character so rewarding and (considering his spec as a 900
year old alien who travels through time) believable. His revelation that
he was a dad once is almost skipped over it is so brief but it opens up a
world of possibilities.

I thought that setting the episode in one street would limit its
potential but Matthew Graham (creator of the excellent Life on Mars)
proves me wrong. Making this such an intimate and believable setting only
served to highlight the horror of the situation. Let's not forget that
this episode deals with some very frightening (and real life) horrors such
as children being abducted and abusive fathers. It is only due to the
show's exhaustless format and juicy science-fiction style that it manages
to imply these terrifying dramas in a supernatural fashion. The parent's
anger in the street as they start pointing the finger at innocent people
feels very real and Trish's quiet terror at the thought of her dead
husband is genuinely frightening. Simon thought the climax of the story
was going too far for the show, having a manifestation of Chloe's dad
screaming out that he is going to hurt her and his dominating shadow
stretching along the hallway but I couldn't disagree more; it is
refreshing to see the show pushing its boundaries and daring to frighten
its audience this much. I would imagine any home where abuse is the order
of the day found this unbearable but it is worth reminding the outside
world that behind closed doors these terrorising things do happen.

That's not to say that there is no imagination here. It would be easy
to rely on real-life dangers and forget about the SF angle but Graham
mixes the two effortlessly and whips a surprisingly potent script. There
is more than a touch of the X-Files episode Scary Monsters here (where a
child's drawings of horrid things come to life) but this feels more
magical and yet more clinical and thus more real. I adore the scribble
monster. What an excellent idea and seeing the boy in the picture run
towards the camera screaming is an amazing concept. Chloe later on drawing
the Doctor and the TARDIS cranks the suspense up brilliantly and suddenly
we are presented with astonishing visual of the stadium full of spectators
suddenly, inexplicably empty. Great, great ideas. The red-lit cupboard
screaming abuse whilst Chloe hurriedly scribbles a picture of the Earth on
the wall is a very memorable climax too, as usual there has to be a
worldwide threat but what an imaginative way to do it! I can think of a
few repeated Earth-in-danger ideas the show has toyed with ad nausem but
this is something entirely original.->

I feel I must compliment both Euros Lyn (the best-looking director on
the planet) and Murray Gold. I was pretty hard on Lyn's treatment of The Idiot's Lantern, not because he did a bad job -
on the contrary it was effortlessly executed - but unfortunately the
script was totally schizophrenic and thus so was the direction, switching
from domestic drama to film noir to horror in the blink of an eye. Fear
Her is a much tighter script which knows exactly what it is focusing
on and Lyn's direction is extremely tight, milking the horror on the
everyday street for all it is worth. The climax was especially effective,
Lyn not shying away from the drama and squeezing every bit of horror out
of Chloe's drawing of her Dad coming to life.

Murray Gold's contribution to this show is largely debated and whilst I
am mostly in favour of his style I understand that he does milk the
sappiness and drown out the action at times. So it pleases me to see how
much he understands the tone of this story, mostly cranking up the tension
with some very scary music but also pushing us towards the climax as Rose
has to fight on her own.

Fear Her surprised me a great deal just like Boom Town did this time last year. It was not the
forgettable filler I was expecting but instead turned out to be one of the
most thoughtful and desirable episodes of the entire year. Given its
limited setting it is shockingly scary in places, hugely imaginative and
achingly poignant. Not only that but it might just be the most adult drama
Doctor Who has served up in many a year.

It is true that in light of the big event storylines surrounding it,
Fear Her can't help but seem dwarfed and mediocre because of its
little quaintness. It is also true that if you hear enough people slate an
episode, you start to agree with them. But I found myself watching it
again after a friend gave me some feedback, letting me know that they
liked Fear Her, in spite of the rest of my criticisms. The New
Series episodes often benefit from a second watch after the season has
come to an end. In Season One's case, some of the things that didn't feel
quite right about certain stories suddenly do feel right in light of the
season's themes and story arc. In Season Two it's more a sense of seeing
the 'quaint' episodes in isolation from the season's up and down
rollercoaster of awe and banality. Viewed in isolation from the rest of
the series and it's actually quite a lovely and charming episode. I mainly
complained about it being another domestic story, coming too soon after
The Satan Pit and too soon before Army of Ghosts, but in rewatching it, I've come to
realise that it's actually very adventurous in its own way.

One thing that sets this story apart from the rest of the season is
that it has a very fleshy, full-blossoming coloured look, as opposed to
the frequent clinical or noir look of most of the stories this season.
Something about this story just feels right. The tone is pretty
consistent, and for once so are the two lead characters. I'd say that
David Tennant feels much more comfortable in the role of the modern Doctor
here than he does elsewhere in this season.

It's been pretty hard to put a finger on what the overall character of
David Tennant's Doctor is, and on what level the audience should respond
to him. When in the opening scenes of Rise of the
Cybermen, the Doctor and Rose are gossiping about alien worlds, the
vocabulary from the Doctor is very off, describing an alien world as "this
planet thingy" and an alien being as "weird looking". It basically doesn't
fit the character of any open minded space faring veteran of 900 years,
but that of a very shallow, adolescent snob travelling the universe with
his date in his parent's spaceship and playing 'look at that freak!' with
the aliens, and in The Satan Pit, telling a bunch
of frontier astronauts about an episode of Eastenders that was on five
hundred years ago.

It is clear that the makers were trying to make the Doctor more like
one of the kids to attract the youth element, and the traditionalist in me
just wants to shout 'that's what the companion's there for, not the
Doctor!' But then this is a New Series that isn't made for the
traditionalists, and is it so hard to accept that they've said goodbye to
what the old Doctor was all about, and introduced a fresh new modern
Doctor that the masses like? They gave us a nice transitional go-between
with Christopher Eccleston, who had a youth appeal but who also seemed to
carry in his performance the weight of the centuries that he had lived and
the struggle to recapture his old spirit and compassion and in that way
managed to be new but still traditional. Maybe Tennant was the inevitable
aftermath of that final swansong of the old Doctor, leaving us with a
teenage Doctor who doesn't have the experience or maturity of centuries of
being alive. The 40 year past of the show didn't happen, and before I
start sounding like Ron Mallett, I should say that this is not necessarily
a bad thing, since the Tom Baker era was one with much in the way of
revisionism. Although somehow I can't see making the Doctor a verbally
diarrheic snobbish teenager who likes trash TV as 'progressive'.

But then there are scenes which make Tennant come across as our old
Doctor, or at least as a character with a long past, like the much praised
"I'm so old now" moment in School Reunion
(which some have described nicely as a 'McCoy-ism') or the "such a lonely
childhood" moment in Girl in the Fireplace, and
that frustrates me because then I don't know which way the series is going
and I would prefer it to not be so schizophrenic in its direction. Maybe
Tennant still is in the 'traditional but new' terrtitory and his
contrariness of being human and yet alien, young and yet old is possibly
tied in with how perhaps in each regeneration, the Doctor can take on
human personality traits. For instance, the Fifth Doctor's love of cricket
and his remark to Adric in Black Orchid of how he
always wanted to be a train driver as a boy are unlikely to have their
origins on Gallifrey, they're just quirks and tastes that come into being
when the Doctor changes into a new man.

In a story which focuses on childhood, the manchild qualities of the
Doctor shine here, rather than seeming like exaggerated attempts to be
down with the kids. As I said, my problem with Tennant's performance was
that it seemed unsettled, but here it is more buoyant. It's still kidding
around stuff involving Inspector Morse impersonations, but somehow Tennant
seems to feel more relaxed about it and therefore so do I, as a viewer. On
reflection this is really how I'd like to see David Tennant as the modern
Doctor, as someone that the youngest children can look up to as a good
natured hero, a slightly geeky and over-excitable one, but one who can
come into the child's world. In a way that becomes beautiful because it is
actually unlike anything else you would see on TV.

And yet at the same time his old quirks are there. There's a lovely
moment when he enters the family's kitchen and dips his fingers in a jar
of jam and helps himself to a lick. It is subtly done and it feels like a
quirk that's genuinely alien and out of step with human etiquette and he
really feels like the Doctor there; I would like to have seen this more
often in the domestic episodes. When confronted with one of the parents
over trespassing on his lawn (nice homage to Survival
here), his facetious reply also feels nicely Doctorish and vaguely
otherworldly. Then of course is the scene where the Doctor first comes to
the house which contains the heart of the menace and is able to play it
aloof and with reverse psychology and manages to manipulate his way in.

Much like in The Idiot's Lantern, the Doctor
has to deal with domestic tyranny here, and I'd say that this is The Idiot's Lantern done right. It even uses
television as a medium for evil in a way that maintains the technophobia
theme of the season. But it is in the Doctor's dealings with the domestic
tyrant that it prevails over The Idiot's Lantern.
What felt like an uninvolving peripheral side show and an opportunity for
the Doctor to exhibit some inane bitchiness and humiliation towards the
tyrant who felt rather too cartoonish to be a threat in the other story,
here the tyrant of the house is the central foil of the drama and the soul
and you actually are drawn to care about the victims and the fear they are
under from the moment they reach out to the Doctor and beg for his help.
In Doctor Who style, this is subverted to surrealism by having the
tyrant in question be a six year old girl and the victim being the mother.
"Do you want me to draw you, mum?" is quite a chilling line. Furthermore
the Doctor's approach feels more traditional, as his approach to the
tyrant is one of investigative understanding rather than storming in with
self-righteous contempt and gloating at the tyrant's humiliation, and this
actually sets up a difference of opinion between the Doctor and companion,
rather than have them act like a sneering clique eager to impress one
another with their bitchiness.

There's something else as well. The story actually acknowledges why the
Doctor suddenly has an interest in sorting out domestic tyrants as well as
galactic ones. He talks of how lonely childhood and alienation is the
makings of tyranny and of people growing into monsters and war-mongers,
and this is another moment which hints at the Doctor's history. It feels
like he's actually thinking of Davros, Morbius, the Master and Salamander
as he says all this, and it provides a context for who the Doctor is now,
and why he's getting involved in affairs that his predecessors would have
left well alone.

Inevitably as a pre-season finale story, there's got to be some
comparisons with last year's counterpart Boom
Town. Like Boom Town, this is a nicely
slower-paced story that allows us to relax and get used to the lead
characters a bit better. It uses the TARDIS interior as a science
laboratory, much like how Boom Town used it as a
custody cell, and I like how it makes the TARDIS a more intimate place to
be. As with Rose's mention of Justicia in Boom
Town, there's also a nice ambiguous reference to the Ninth Doctor
Books in that Rose subtly suggests (wow, Rose's character and subtlety?
Never!) that she was once bullied, which fits in with what we read in Winner Takes All. Where Fear Her perhaps falls
where Boom Town succeeds is that by this point
the season finale is almost upon us and the Doctor has shown no interest
in this 'torchwood' enigma that is supposed to have its full revelations
next week. But that is not so much a criticism of Fear Her as a
standalone.

As with Boom Town, there is again the theme of
empathy with tyrants, and I have to say this is in many ways something
that would rarely crop up in the old series, which tended to have more
pulp definitions of good and evil. By comparison, much of Season One was
driven by empathy, forgiveness, sympathy for the devil and preaching
understanding. I must say, though, that one of my issues with Season Two
was that all too often it felt like a redundant retread of the themes of
last year's season. I find it frustrating that the most striking moments
of Season Two were actually the few moments which went against that theme,
whether it be The Impossible Planet's
idea of true evil and 'don't trust the aliens' or The
Age of Steel's shocking depiction of the heroes committing a mercy
killing and a revenge killing. Fear Her however manages to still
feel fresh, current and traditional.

It has been heavily slated by some fans, to the point where some have
described it as the 'worst Doctor Who ever'. The main criticisms
seem to weigh heavily on two particular scenes, one is the 'fingers on
lips' moment and the bit where the Doctor gets involved in the marathon.
I'll admit that I did feel an urge to cringe at those moments, and yet I
feel that they could have actually worked for a previous Doctor. I think
Sylvester McCoy could have made the 'fingers on lips' scene feel quite
sinister, and likewise if Tom Baker had leapt onto the race track I don't
think anyone would have passed comment on it. To my mind, it just works as
a story. As with the best of Doctor Who, it is confident enough and
warm enough to overcome a few duff or low brow moments, and the "I'm
reporting you to the council" gag is great.

Some have dismissed this as kid's stuff, but I actually welcome that
because it gives the episode its magical edge. In fact, to me, a return to
innocence is most welcome in this story, particularly after the crudeness
of Love & Monsters. Likewise, it is nice to
see the return of the likeable Rose, in a story which actually tests her
anger but emphasises her compassion and understanding winning through. It
allows me to feel the slate is wiped clean from the mean streak she has
exhibited elsewhere in this season.

But if there's one reason I like this episode more than any other, it
has got to be the Exorcist-like scene where the Doctor has hypnotised the
child and she is telling him about an alien race with alien powers and
alien thought processes, and makes us believe that we are dealing with
something that has far, far greater emotional needs than us, and we
sympathise. And here's the thing, this all takes place in a little
bedroom, and through a few children's drawings and some vivid dialogue, we
are called upon to imagine this alien swarm travelling across the stars,
creating its own fictional realities. This is traditional Doctor
Who, where the spoken word can build an entire universe and take the
viewer's imagination beyond vision. That's why I like this story, because
it resists the increasingly insular and soapy focus of the new series and
encourages us to look beyond our little world of self-involvement, and to
me this is important, because given what we saw in Doomsday and in the more recent Torchwood episodes,
Fear Her might be the last Doctor Who story in a long time
to do so.

By the way, the film Paperhouse which inspired this story is well worth
seeing.

I was dreading it. A London setting so soon after Love & Monsters wasn't something I was looking
forward to. In fact the online reviews for Love &
Monsters generally concluded with "Oh yeah, and next week looks crap
too...". But instead we got one of the most imaginative adventures of the
series from Mathew Graham. An adventure that has cause and effect, a good
script, an intriguing story, an eerie atmosphere and a few scares and, most
importantly, the Doctor and Rose are likeable. Fear Her is a good
example of how the budget cheapies can work in the hands of a very good
director and writer.

Some people don't like it for one scene - well, two scenes. The first one
is the reaction of the TV announcer (Hugh Edwards) when the Olympic stadium
full of people disappear saying he is stilted and wooden. Well, he is not a
paid actor and was good enough to give his time to Who so I don't
think he should be damned too much. And it is interesting that he was
picked, perhaps the BBC thinks he is the only one with a career left in 2012
(personally I think it was because he was Welsh). And of course there is the
sickly ending where the Doctor picks up the Olympic torch and lights the
flame and the Edwards' commentary about it being about "a flame of hope and
love" which had TV critic Charlie Brookner reaching for the sick bucket. I
wondered what else could be powered by love? How about fighter jets fuelled
by love with irony-powered afterburners and armed with sarcasm-seeking
missiles?

I'm being faectious. I enjoyed Fear Her. Above all, it's a
good Rose story. Father's Day was the
ultimate Rose story but this runs a good second. She gets plenty to do
here, as she spots the missing children posters first, finds the
Isolass pod, and helps Trish and Chloe to defeat the monster lurking at
the top of the stairs. The frequency with which Rose saved the day
whilst the Doctor was incapacitated in Series One quickly became
irritating, but since it has become a rarity in Series Two, it serves
as a reminder of just why she originally made a decent companion. And
she is a pleasure here, the sheer shock of the Doctor's disappearance
is wonderfully played by Billie Piper. Her anger that this silly little
girl may have stranded her in 2012 on her own is stunningly portrayed.
I thought at one point she was going to thump Chloe Webster, and the
audience may have cheered her if she did.

David Tennant does good work as well. His speeches are overcooked as
usual but when he tones it down and does serious he becomes very impressive.
His appreciation of the Isolass's power is quite effective, and seems
perfectly in character, and Tennant plays the role with more restraint . The
Doctor gets some genuinely amusing moment, including his response to the
question, "What's your game?" which quickly peters out and he mutters, "I'm
being facetious, I... there's no call for it." I also smiled at his response
to Rose's, realization, "The girl!" which is "Of course! What girl?" Best of
all however, is the Doctor's calming of the residents and in particularly
his reassurance of Trish, as he walks into a frightening situation and
immediately takes charge.

The central idea, of a little girl who can turn people into drawings,
fits perfectly into the Doctor Who format, and in the tradition of
the classic series, there's a handy technobabble explanation about ionic
energy on hand to explain it. For the most part, this is more interesting
rather than creepy, although the roars of "I'm going to hurt you" from
Chloe's monstrous picture of her dead father manage to be unsettling at
times, especially during the last five minutes of the episode.

Then the mystery of Chloe's powers is removed and the episode becomes
rather less eerie, but gives way to themes of loneliness, with the Isolass
having empathized with Chloe because they are both lonely children, and the
Doctor sympathizing with both of them because as he tells Rose, "I know what
it's like to travel a long way on your own." This is exactly the sort of
emotional realism that Russell T. Davies usually shoves clumsily into the
series, but here, in the hands of Matthew Graham, it works really well, with
both Chloe and the Isolass feeling almost as much like victims as the
children (and later adults) drawn into the pair's fictional world.

The climax has Rose racing against time first to find and reactivate the
Isolass's pod before Chloe finishes drawing the world, and then to help
Chloe and Trish unite to exorcise the spectre of Chloe's father. The moral
of the story, that everybody needs a hand to hold, isn't particularly
revelatory, but for the most part it's a cheerful message that generally
manages to avoid being nauseating. Abisola Agbaje puts in a very fine
performance as Chloe, managing to alternate between menace and vulnerability
as the script demands. Abdul Salis has a good comic turn as a council
tarmacklayer and his scenes with Rose are very amusing. Rose Tyler is at her
best when she is dealing with people on her own level.

To be frank, this isn't what we needed straight after the lamentable Love & Monsters. We needed to be distracted by a
tale set away from London. But they were saving the SFX budget for Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. Those new estates of
semi-detatched houses set in the shadow of Canary Wharf that have sprung up
over the last five years are a good enough location for domestic horror.
I've seen the future and it is certainly is Barrett homes. Fear Her
will never top the tree as the favourite of the season but it doesn't plumb
the depths of some of the Russell T Davies efforts. And I haven't mentioned
the words 'Paperhouse' in the entire review. The whole adventure passes
muster. It's a good, creepy, modern thriller and the Isolass are a good,
original monster.

I like Fear Her, but I can't say it's one of my all-time
favourites. In Olympic terms it was a rank outsider who comes up on the
inside lane and doesn't quite get the gold. A silver medal? Well, that's
still pretty good. Better then we all expected.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. It was supposed to be like Doctor Who
meets The Exorcist and instead it was sort of like a demented episode of
Sesame Street wherein all the plot holes and leaps of logic could only be
filled in by the largest joint in history.

Written by Matthew Graham, the episode suffers both from bad writing
and bad production. It feels like it's been written by committee and what
ideas do come through do not gel at all. The most truly annoying aspect of
this story, aside from the tediously improbable premise, was the little
girl. The supposed "alien" voice sounded like just what it was: a little
girl putting it on. Couldn't we have had at least a synthesised daemonic
voice of some kind? All it sounded like was that she was in dire need of a
throat lozenge.

And this story's obligatory grimacing moment was the Olympic torch
scene. Even the last little forced introspection about a storm approaching
was ripped directly from the penultimate season one X-Files episode. It
really was Boom Town all over again. If it looked
cheap and unimaginative, that's because it was.

I've seen porn better made than this... actually I've seen student
films uploaded on YouTube of a higher quality. The only reason I must
watch the rest of the season is for the morbid fascination value in
finding out exactly to what depths the series can fall.

It's quite sweet. It's also the most domestic Doctor Who TV
story ever, making Father's Day look like a
Bond movie. It's so focused on one small street that the Olympics look as
big as an alien invasion. Even the books never did this, with only The Deadstone Memorial to date even coming close.
(I don't count books like Happy Endings and Return of the Living Dad, which may be focused on single
villages but are heaving with aliens and time travellers. English
villages are the Doctor Who equivalent of Stephen King's American
small towns in the middle of nowhere.)

Its people feel like real people. Cal the council worker is
delightful, and extraordinary in Doctor Who for being so normal.
"When you've worked it out, put it in a big book about tarmacking." He
also had me in stitches with "I'm reporting you to the council". Also the
people in the street felt real, even the walking cliche of the old woman
whose dire warnings keep being ignored. In its own unflashy way, this
episode is well played and fantastically cast. Abisola Agbaje is
particularly impressive as Chloe Webber, doing solid work in a key role.
Never take good performances from child actors for granted. Consider that
cringeworthy moment at the end of School
Reunion, for instance.

As an aside, surprisingly for what's ostensibly a children's series,
the classic series hardly ever used child actors. Of course this makes
perfect sense from a production standpoint. Children are obviously far
less experienced than adult actors, aren't full-time professionals and
can't even work the same hours. Oddly, in this department as in one or
two others, the Cartmel era foreshadowed Russell T. Davies. There are
probably more McCoy stories starring children than in all the preceding
eras put together. On the one hand there's... ooooh, The Mind Robber, Castrovalva and
maybe a scene with young Kassia in Keeper of Traken,
or is that only the novelisation? An Unearthly Child
and Mawdryn Undead show us schools, but with older
teenagers rather than kiddywinks. One could also count The Dominators or The Claws of
Axos, but that's a real stretch. However the McCoy era gave us Delta and the Bannermen, Dragonfire, Remembrance of the
Daleks, Greatest Show in the Galaxy and Survival.

Here in particular, it lets the story go places that wouldn't be the
same with an adult Chloe. Again Doctor Who is taking deliberately
silly ideas and making them real. The scribble monster, the animated
drawings, the dead Dad in the closet... I also appreciated the fact that
it doesn't blindly romanticise childhood. There's that TARDIS scene
between the Doctor and Rose in which the latter's slagging off kiddies.

In its own delicately understated way, most of this is a lovely story.
I don't even mind the "power of love" ending. It's logical and right,
given the nature of the monster. No, 'twas the Olympic flame sequence
that had me screaming, and even that's basically the fault of the TV
announcer. He delivers some lines so purple as to choke you, although
even that is hardly unrealistic. Sports commentators never go over the
top, no sir. It's their job to oversell the shebang, making the Olympics
into a bigger deal than the Second Coming. If you think about it, that
ghastly commentary is probably what you'd really hear if those events
happened live on TV... but sadly such gritted-teeth rationalisations
don't make the moment any less painful.

In fairness, these things are all subjective. I'm sure many viewers
thought that sequence was perfect. Um. I'm happy for them.

Not for the first time in New Who, the story's best bit of
imagery is in the pre-credits sequence. Tooth and
Claw had kung-fu monks, then here we have animation. I'd have loved
more of that, but the episode as it stands doesn't need it. You'd want an
animated subplot with the Doctor's adventures in scribble land or
something, which might have been cheaper than you'd think. You can do all
kinds of things these days with Flash or computer treatment of live-action
footage. I'd have certainly enjoyed that more than the Olympic flame
sequence. Ah well.

Another thing that lacked subtlety was the voice in the wardrobe.
It's not working on any level but the big shouty one. However, in a way I
felt 'twould have been the cheap option to make suggestions of sexual
abuse that would go over the heads of the children in the audience. It
would have been a step into TV Drama Land, in which nine out of ten
missing parents have been murdered and nine out of ten missing children
have been kidnapped and/or become drug-addicted underage prostitutes. I
particularly appreciated the restraint given the fact that less than a
month previously we'd had another abusive father in The Idiot's Lantern. More interesting to me is the
question of whether that's really Chloe's dad in there. Has the real man
been resurrected or is that just a caricature, drawn from Chloe's
subjective memories? I think a better angle would be to play up the
sadness of the latter. Real people don't think of themselves as monsters,
yet this man's daughter ended up seeing him as a screaming hate-filled
beast. You could take that somewhere almost heartbreaking.

There's a lot to admire in this story. Such a miniature is riskier and
often less memorable than the straightforward crowd-pleasing "stompy
monsters and gun battles". I think mostly it works surprisingly well, and
perhaps better than it deserved to. Bad direction or bad acting could
have made this unwatchable. Apart from the Olympic sequence, I think my
only quibble is that the story could have used more layers. If you're
going to do something this mundane and down-to-earth, you need to paint
the characters that much more richly and truthfully. Giving the episode a
deeper level of subtlety and insight into its characters could have made
it truly memorable and a highlight of the season.

It's still good, though. I love the idea for the monster, while
Tennant and Piper are endearingly playful. I like it, but I don't feel it
quite does enough to pull itself up from the pack. Eccleston's episodes
were all memorably distinctive. Tennant's episodes are less so. If you
think about it, this episode could have been almost as special as Boom Town or Love &
Monsters. That's a pretty tough criticism, though. Fear Her
may be a draft or two away from greatness, but in its own modest way it's
still gentle and sweet.

Fear Her does have an intriguing premise: a lonely little girl
who will do anything to prevent that, even snatching other kids into her
drawings. Locking things into one neighborhood, one that's pretty and neat
and normal adds to the underlying creepiness.

And yet...

Fear Her feels like it's marking time until we get to the Grand
Finale of season two. The bits with the Olympics, despite being well
integrated into the episode, have that "tacked on from high above" feel to
them. Not to mention a new potential winner in the "Worst Who
Moment, Ever" category (Tentacle and Olympic Flame).

Billie Piper is really good here, and does manage to carry most of the
episode. Tennant is off; I found him annoying. The guest cast are all
right, but no one really stands out.

I wish I had more to say about Fear Her. It works, but doesn't
really stick in the mind.

This episode was cringe-worthy in my opinion. Absolute and utter
rubbish. It was a total waste of money for a Stephen Fry script that would
have been much better than... this. This even makes Trial
of a Time Lord look absolutely awesome, it was so bad.

The only good points in the episode were David Tennant and the Dalek
foreshadowing at the end. Everything else, however, sucked. Rose came
close, but her stupid dialogue was annoying. Billie Piper has become more
annoying as the series progressed, but this episode did try and do a
turnaround with her character. The villain, a little girl, was so
unthreatening and cliched that a battery-dead K9 could have beaten her (no
offence to the robotic dog). And the happy ending... god, don't remind me
why I hate episodes with a happy ending (The Idiot's
Lantern was disappointing because of this)!

Absolute disappointment and an utter load of rubbish. If you missed
this episode, you're very lucky to have - unless you were waiting for the
preview at the end of the episode, which you should definitely watch!

It seemed like such a great idea at the time, didn't it? Getting
Matthew Graham, co-creator of that brilliant series, Life On Mars, to
write a Doctor Who story. Well, in theory - because Fear Her
is flat, dull, badly acted and completely boring. It has no atmosphere,
fails to build up a sense of threat, and becomes the new series' cure for
insomnia.

Let's deal with the good points first. The TARDIS materialisation at
the beginning is quite clever (I've always wanted to see that happen!) and
the conclusion when Rose temporarily loses the Doctor allows her to show
some of the colours she's been missing since Series One. Also, there's
that tantalising bit in the TARDIS where the Doctor offhandedly states "I
was a dad once." That's the single moment this forgettable adventure will
be remembered for.

The rest is just bad. First off, Chloe Webber. Abisola Agbaje is a
sub-standard child actress, and this is the greatest failing of the
episode. Chloe should be the most absorbing character in the story.
Instead, she's just irritating. She never convinces once, even when the
Isolus is speaking through her. Even that song is annoying. The only
interesting thing about her is her relationship with her abusive father,
which gives the episode its most distinctive and fascinatingly terrifying
idea. The rest of the cast are wooden and wander around the story like
unbelievable stick figures. The direction is also flat, a surprise coming
from the usually excellent Euros Lyn. The lack of atmosphere is ironically
quite noticeable. Every single episode of the new series, except this one,
has atmosphere - no matter how bad the story may be. This just feels odd.

Added to all these problems is, and it really pains me to say this, the
Doctor. During Series Two, David Tennant struggled to find his feet (not
really a criticism; look at Patrick Troughton's first few stories and see
how long it took him to settle down). Here, Tennant is playing the mad,
nutty Doctor. He can't get the balance correct. His best moments are
undoubtedly the quieter moments, such as when he first talks to the
Isolus. But he spends the first fifteen minutes just irritating with his
speakingridiculouslyquicklysothatnoonecanmakesenseofwhathessaying. It's
strange watching him like this now because we know that when he is at his
best, he's one of the best Doctors. By Series Three, he'd perfected his
approach.

I suppose we must be charitable to this story when we remember its
genesis. Fear Her, along with Tooth and
Claw, was one of the last commissioned scripts from Series Two, after
Stephen Fry became too busy to work on his script. The quick turnaround
must have made it difficult to fine-tune Fear Her. This could have
been a strong episode of the series, never the best but good enough to be
counted as a success.

A friend and I recently concluded that Fear Her is the worst
episode of the new series so far. Don't let it happen when you take over,
Stephen.

Fear Her is an episode you can really get your teeth into.
Sure, it's not one of the best the new series has delivered but, now and
again, these light-hearted episodes are just what the Doctor ordered.
Some people despise this episode, due to the performance the girl who
played Chloe Webber gave; I think the performance she gave was all right
and the overall episode isn't all that bad. There are good points and bad
points that altogether prove that an episode that isn't going to be a
classic can still be worth the fuss.

When we first hear that familiar sound of the TARDIS materialising, and
the Doctor getting the landing wrong just reminds me of Ace's comment in
Ghostlight... "Your still a lousy parker" in their
first scene together in the episode. The build up, especially where the
Doctor talks on and on about his visit to the very first Olympics sets the
tone and also tells you something about what the storyline might be about,
as does the banner representing the fact the Doctor and Rose have arrived
in 2012, where the London Olympics are due to come in another four years.
As both the Doctor and Rose enter the small community, where, at first
glances, they spot the poster telling of the missing children. I suppose
that's rather frightening really and although its not an alien that is
completely evil or round the bend, it's something that every parent
wouldn't want to happen to their children.

What I also like about this episode is that the creature drawn to Chloe
Webber was in fact just like her. Just as lonely as her. I felt that was
a good twist as it wasn't drawn by evil that is normally the case but
because the alien itself (Isolus) has such a human emotion as feeling
lonely, it just wanted to have some company and that I suppose mimics the
Doctor and why he travels with Rose. Since the show returned, there's been
a running theme of loneliness concerning the Doctor and why he travels
with someone in time and space.

I also liked the Doctor's comment in the TARDIS when he states quite
firmly to Rose, "I was a dad, once" which the show hasn't really touched
upon before. Only these days have they had such episodes, based on the
Doctors family and whatever happened to them in the Time War. Chloe
Webber's father was another 'something' that I rather liked, though I feel
that the series is concentrating too heavily on family issues and isn't
moving on... Though I have to say that in recent years, since series four,
the series has certainly gone on and moved on from such issues.

David Tennant and Billie Piper are terrific. I liked Rose in this
episode better that many of the other episodes she had been in during that
particular series. Though, I did like her in School Reunion and the following episodes after
Fear Her. I never expected anything less from David Tennant. His
Doctor continues to shine and paves the way for a good future ahead.

So, all in all, one hell of an episode that had its ups and downs and
had a good plot and some interesting ideas that didn't go to waste.

Possibly in joint position with Boom Town for
being the worst serving of an adventure since the series' return in 2005.
Mediocrity abounds in this story - and it is never more obvious than in
its dull Brookside Close setting. There is obviously nothing wrong with
setting a story in a quiet, residential street. In fact, it has worked
extremely well in the past, present and no doubt the future. But this
street, along with its residents, was just dull. Look back to similar
settings in Survival or all the scenes set within
Rose Tyler's Powell Estate. They were impressive, you could identify with
them because they were real. Not so here, unfortunately. There just seemed
to be something soap-opera-ish about it all.

Let me start with what I personally felt worked in the story's
favour:

The elderly lady who knew something was up. The only interesting
character (besides the regulars) that made an impression on me. She should
definitely have played a bigger part in the narrative.

The doodle! Great effect and a really interesting idea that never
reached fruition. Sadly.

The very last scene where the Doctor senses that a storm is
approaching. A nice bit of drama and tension at the end on an episode that
was otherwise devoid of such things.

The pre-credits sequence! It promised sooooo much and had such
potential. But it's unfortunate that one of the whole story's highlights
appear even before the opening credits)

Now for what I personally disliked:

Chloe Webber: not the worst child actress I've ever seen but
certainly not very good either. When she was possessed she just seemed
like what she was: a kid pretending to be possessed. No threat or eeriness
at all. The Exorcist this is not!

The Dad in the closet (apparently meant to be frightening or
something). Just came across as a badly drawn scribble on the wall.

The mother was instantly forgettable.

Possibly the worst offender of all was that cringe-worthy scene of the
Doctor with the Olympic Torch. I hate sport as it is and this scene just
gave me one more good reason to genuinely have a true disgust for it all!

The episode was called Fear Her. I have absolutely no idea why. I
genuinely have been more afraid of the contents of my bowels after I have
emptied them!!! Not even the Doctor disappearing affected me that much. To
be fair though, Billie did a great job holding the episode together in his
absence.

To say this episode was terrible would be a massive injustice. As with
The Idiot's Lantern, both stories are watchable
and enjoyable but never manage to tick all the boxes of a truly brilliant
Doctor Who story. Even the worst stories have redeeming qualities
and entertainment value. The saddest thing about these episodes is that
they hold so much potential that you are left not with a thought of
something like "wow, that was fantastic", but rather a sense of "wow, that
could have been something fantastic". Nothing is perfect and it is our
job, as part of Doctor Who's enduring fandom, to nitpick and
complain about all the stuff that really is important to us, but is
probably not important or is loved by the majority of other fans. That is
what makes this show unique: its ability to divide opinion. To stir these
kind of emotions and feelings. To create discussions and debates that
stretch back to its humble beginnings in 1963 to this very day.

I don't like this episode. But my rubbish might be another's treasure.
And that is what counts!

It's easy to be a cynic and the London 2012 Olympics offered plenty of
opportunities for this. I fully admit for the last 7 years I dreaded the
coming of the games and did so with the easy cynicism of being a Londoner
and having the opportunity to moan about how much it was going to cost me
in taxes and how the tube lines and their antiquated infrastructure was
going to collapse with the influx of all the visitors to London. It got so
bad that I even planned a holiday so I'd be out of London when it happened
and would be able to sit smugly thousands of miles away and watch everyone
else suffer instead.

Of course, as it happens, whilst I did escape London (and had a jolly
nice holiday), there wasn't anything catastrophic to escape from. The
games went well, the tubes ran on time, and everyone really enjoyed
themselves. And so it is with Fear Her. We're so used to looking
down on it, considering it the filler until the big climax of the story
where we've been promised the Doctor and Rose will be split apart for ever
(Sheesh, is this Doctor Who or EastEnders?) that we forget to enjoy
Fear Her simply for what it is and on its own merit.

There are plenty of plus points to this story. The opening is suitably
creepy and intriguing as it slowly draws you in to the mystery of the
missing children and the lone figure watching ominously from the window.
When the drawing of the kid comes to life, it's a damn fine moment and a
great hook for the pre-titles sequence overall. It's certainly more
enjoyable than moody Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, info
dumping to the audience from a Norwegian beach.

I appreciate I'm probably in a minority here, but I actually don't
think Abisola Agbaje is a bad child actress. Okay sure, she's not Caitlin
Blackwood, but I think she does a good job of distinguishing between her
normal self and the Isolus-possessed Chloe. As the Isolus-voiced one, I
also think she portrays the loneliness and scared confusion of the alien
pretty well. It's an imaginative concept too, an alien used to hearing the
voices of billions, confused and scared by the silence.

The scribble monster is a neat idea and a good clue for the Doctor to
get an idea of what's happening. Nina Sosanya probably deserves a much
more meatier role, but as Trish she helps provide the viewpoint of
normalcy which neatly counterpoints the spookiness going on under her own
roof. Consider also that when all is said and done Doctor Who is
primarily a children's show (yes it is!), its willingness to nonetheless
touch on more mature subjects, like the child abuse backstory, is
acceptable in this context and highlights the real monsters out there.

Many of the valid criticisms leveled at this story apply just as
equally to Season 2 as a whole, so to make Fear Her the whipping
boy for the nauseatingly self-satisfied relationship between the Doctor
and Rose is unfair in the extreme, ignoring the far worse Tooth and Claw (no, we're really NOT amused), the
cringe worthy "cat fight" with Sarah Jane in School Reunion, and the petulant pouting as the
Doctor cavorts with Madame de Pompadour. The ending is pure cheese as the
Doctor grabs the torch, but presciently it captures the good cheer the
games really did bring, even to a curmudgeon like me. I'm sure all the
kids who were watching at the time were cheering the Doctor on.

I'm never going to say that Fear Her is the greatest episode of
all time. It's not even the greatest episode of Season 2. But I personally
would rank it higher than New Earth, The Girl in the Fireplace, The
Idiot's Lantern and Love & Monsters, and
still ahead of many other Tennant episodes from The
Lazarus Experiment to Planet of the Dead.
It's a fun little piece. If you leave the cynicism at the door and instead
chow down your edible ball bearings whilst ignoring how annoying David
Tennant can be when he's not reigned in on the whole "Cor Guv Ain't
Everything Brill!" schtick, then this is a perfectly decent way to spend
45 minutes.

If we're being perfectly frank here, and I like to think we are,
Fear Her is decent filler. I'm going to say a lot about it in the
next six or seven paragraphs, and we'll analyze and critique the acting
and the story and the production and the characters and all that, but this
story doesn't ever seem designed to be anything but the episode that fills
out the BBC's quota before the two-part finale. It's probably the
least-ambitious story we've encountered so far, and so I find it hard to
judge the episode solely on its merits. However, subsequent seasons
provide far better filler material, and Fear Her certainly doesn't
achieve anything more than it wants to.

We start in a small just-outside-of-London street at the start of the
2012 London Games, and immediately something is up. It seems kids are
being snatched from the street, and there's this creepy girl that's taking
them into her drawings, and... let's wait half the episode for the Doctor
and Rose to figure out what we already know. This is a common problem in a
lot of villain-of-the-week shows, but Doctor Who has always been
good about keeping the audience and the characters fairly in line. When we
know something they don't, it's either to convey irony or to create
tension/horror. In Fear Her, there's no reason for us to know that
Chloe Webber is kidnapping the kids. Of course, we don't know why she's
doing it, but we don't need the Doctor and Rose to waste 15 minutes
getting to where we are. It's filler inside filler.

Of course, the actors make it at least somewhat interesting. We're
getting near the end of the Billie Piper era - and I'll be sure to give
her a proper send-off in the Army of
Ghosts/Doomsday review - but she's really good in this episode,
showing off how far she's come as a companion. At the start, Rose is
resourceful but childish and insecure, only succeeding in her eponymous
episode out of dumb luck. Now, she's a fully developed detective,
channeling her resourcefulness to save the day even without the Doctor.
The best thing about Fear Her is that it lets Rose play hero at the
end, and while she does so in the far-superior The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, she isn't
entirely on her own there. Piper plays this Rose as confident, then shaken
to the point of nearly striking a child when the Doctor is taken and
finally as the clever, charming hero we know her to be at this point. It's
quite a turn in what's been quite a run for the actress.

David Tennant gets a bit less to do here, and he's on cruise control
throughout. The reason Tennant lags slightly behind Christopher Eccleston
and Matt Smith in the title role is his inability to lift a mediocre
episode into being pretty good. It's difficult to picture episodes like Boom Town and The Long Game
earning B-minuses with Tennant playing the Doctor. This isn't necessarily
Tennant's fault - Eccleston is a generational talent and Smith isn't far
behind - but he's clearly not the actor his predecessor or successor is,
and it shows here. The guest turns are relatively unexciting, with the
exception of young Abisola Agbaje as Chloe, who manages to pull off creepy
and sweet at the same time. Character actor Abdul Salis gets a fun comic
turn as tarmac worker Kel, as well.

Still, nothing that's going on is of much interest. Once the Doctor and
Rose get wise to the plot, we learn that Chloe is possessed by something
called an Isolus, which is separated from its four-billion-strong pack
down here on Earth. Multiple problems are presented here - even getting
past the tackiness of the name "Isolus", the creature's obvious innocence
isn't juxtaposed against anything meaningful, and so we feel like we've
hit a dead end. The Doctor getting snatched is an interesting twist, but
it never feels like Rose won't save the day. The inevitable
Davies-stakes-raising is extremely forced here, with Chloe literally
drawing just a picture of the Earth on her wall to needlessly morph
Fear Her into an apocalypse story. There's also the abusive-father
angle, which exists only to provide the episode with an obvious villain
and to give the characters some depth. It's transparent and it's lazy.

In fact, Matthew Graham really isn't cut out to write Doctor Who
at all, and it shows. You've got so many cliches here: the old lady who
can sense the supernatural danger, the kids who get kidnapped doing
completely innocent things, the aforementioned Hail Mary character
development and, worst of all, the incredibly hokey ending to the
proceedings in which the Olympic torch is required to heat the Isolus'
spaceship. I mean, good grief, man! The Davies era is known for some
unnecessary British nationalism, but this is easily the worst it gets. And
then you've got Tennant with that stupid smirk on his face lighting the
torch at the opening ceremony. Beacon of hope and love, my God. Beacon of
vomit, if you ask me.

There's nothing spectacular about the rest of the episode, either. The
production and direction are standard and there aren't any other
interesting characters; there isn't even a strong Torchwood reference,
just a "storm is coming" ending tacked on at the last minute to connect to
the finale. Fear Her limps to the finish line on poor plotting and
execution, with only Billie Piper and a somewhat-interesting premise to
keep the eyes open. This is the fourth story in Series 2 that's worse than
the worst from Series 1, and, unfortunately, the show's quality tends to
reside here and not at the previous level for the majority of its run.
Still, as filler, I suppose it could be worse. I guess.

Fear Her was not a Doctor Who episode I fondly remembered
(along with quite a lot of fans) and re-watching it does not change my
mind.

The idea of putting the Doctor on an ordinary street setting to combat
an alien menace is an interesting idea, but Fear Her is rather too
similar to The Idiot's Lantern, only a few
episodes ago: both have a London street (Florizel Street/Dame Kelly Holmes
Close) at the time of a big national event (The 1953 Coronation/The 2012
Olympics) with an alien (The Wire/Isolus) targeting local people through
imprisoning their consciousness but moving on to target those watching the
above event and a nearby family (Tommy's/Chloe's) suffering from an
aggressive father. While The Idiot's Lantern had
its faults, the 1950's setting at least added flavour to the episode, not
the case for Fear Her, which just feels rather bland even with the
2012 Olympics tying in to the plot, not helped by the apparently lacking
budget for this episode.

The Doctor and Rose make a good team when working on the investigation.
The end of Rose's time in the TARDIS is foreshadowed at the episode's end
although not in a particularly subtle way. When the Doctor is imprisoned
in one of the drawings, Rose is able to use her initiative in order to
discover where the Isolus pod landed and later to help Chloe and her
mother, Trish, defeat the drawing of the Chloe's father.

The concept of living drawings was an ideal idea for Doctor Who
but never really reached its potential. There was a chance for real scares
with pictures that move (eyes that seem to follow you), but very little
was done with this. Likewise, the pictures that came to life were a let
down: the Scribble Creature was a silly idea and was too easily defeated
by the sonic screwdriver. The drawing of Chloe's father that came to life
could have been creepy but went a bit over the top.

Silliness can describe lot of faults of Fear Her, be it the
'love' of the Olympics powering the Isolus pod, the Olympic announcer's
'stunned' reaction to the empty stadium, the drawing of Chloe's father
being sung away or the Doctor running with the Olympic torch, the woman's
warning in the teaser or the cat vanishing into a box. These aspects
should never have made it past the first draft. The plot suffers from
holes such as why the Scribble Creature manifests in a garage Rose just
happens to be passing or why does the Isolus not snatch Rose like it did
the Doctor?

Fear Her had its good points, namely the Doctor and Rose. While
the guest cast were forgettable, Trish was a well-written and performed
mother wanting to help her daughter. The council worker was likeable
enough; perhaps he should have appeared in more of the episode.

Fear Her may not be the worst Doctor Who has ever offered
us, but it appears it will never endear itself with many fans (the same
going for the equally derided previous episode Love & Monsters). I know another re-watch will
not endear it to me.